


Safe House

by Deannie



Series: Moments [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Community: hc_bingo, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 20:51:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5179211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’d all been laid bare, hadn’t they? Every secret worming itself to the surface, every skeleton escaping the depths of the closet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safe House

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic for my hc_bingo card, prompt: skeletons in the closet.

Memories and sounds and sensations flooded through her in a cold stream. The gurney had been cold, too. She remembered that. They had told her it would be quick, efficient, nearly painless.

“Nat?”

She shouldn’t have been surprised that they lied.

 _The pain is a tool, Natalia,_ her handler had told her, as her womb cramped and bled. _Pain is a focus. Use it._ They had said she would feel clearer after the procedure. _A potential burden lifted. One less complication in such a complicated life._

“Come on, Nat. Focus on me, now. We gotta get moving, okay?”

“Clint?” It was Clint, right? Natasha looked up blearily, and his broad face was there, eyes worried and soft. Clint was never complicated. Her abdomen cramped with phantom pain and she curled into it.

“Yeah, ‘Clint’,” he agreed, sighing. “Come on, partner.” He hauled her to her feet with a groan. “We’re here, okay. Let’s get you inside.”

But he dragged her _outside_. Outside and away from cold and metal and into clear, crisp, rich air. Wheat and horses.

“Safe house,” she whispered, barely stumbling along next to him. Thor, Steve, Stark… Bruce. They stumbled along, too. Beaten. But walking under their own power. She tried to push away from Clint, but it only made him grip her tighter. She couldn’t be like this. She had to gain control.

 _You are never weak, Natalia_ , her handler told her flatly. _Do not pretend to be unless it serves the mission._

The mission. She pulled herself straight and tall as her feet hit the first step leading up to Clint’s porch, and Clint wisely let her go without a word.

“Honey?” he called, as she’d heard him call many times before in the last eight years. “I’m home!”

People buzzed around her—Tony mouthing off in his uncertainty, Thor shifting with his own painful revelations, Steve alive with a terrible stillness. Against the wall she dimly noted that Bruce had curled in on himself, his muscles almost singing with tension and horror. They’d all been laid bare, hadn’t they? Every secret worming itself to the surface, every skeleton escaping the depths of the closet.

“Daddy!” Lila’s voice was high and excited, as it always seemed to be. She had more energy than eight superheroes put together.

 _Daddy_. God, how shocked Natasha been when she first walked in here and saw a much younger Laura Barton, great with child and carrying a squirming little boy in her arms, smiling up at Clint and greeting him with, “He missed you, Daddy.” Laura had handed the boy off to his father and then gently rubbed her belly. “And _she’s_ been kicking me all week.”

Laura hadn’t trusted Natasha at the beginning—Natasha certainly hadn’t trusted herself, so it hardly bothered her—but they’d become friends by the time Lila was born.

“Maybe you’ll find someone,” Laura had said, nursing the baby with an ease that left a part of Natasha seething and raw. “The kids can play with their cousins when Auntie Nat comes to visit.”

Play with their cousins… The pain of that particular skeleton was like a firebrand in her stomach. A hole where a child would be. Something she’d put from her mind her entire life had been thrust to the fore and she didn't know how to rein it back in.

_One less complication in such a complicated life._

“I try to live the simple life—when I can,” Clint had explained, the first time he’d brought her here. He’d gestured to his wife and child. “It doesn’t get much simpler than them.”

Something clicked in Natasha’s brain, and the awkward world suddenly became fluid around her. She realized that she'd hidden herself behind Tony and Steve, small and tired and beaten—not unlike that first time she’d walked through the door to this perfect family’s perfect home. Her gaze went to Bruce, the feelings she didn’t bother hiding anymore suddenly more intense and painful and complicated.

She could use simple right now.

“Is Aunt Nat here?” Lila piped up. A child happy to see her, a soul she’d connected to on sight.

Natasha sloughed off all the pain, all the memories. She threw the bones back in their bag and shoved them into the dustiest corner of her mind. _You are never weak, Natalia._ No. No, she never was. It was a curse far more than a blessing, but it gave her the strength to step around her teammates and open her arms to the delighted girl before her.

“Why don’t you hug her and find out!?”

*****  
the end


End file.
